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Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests. A superpower is traditionally considered to be a step higher than a great power. Alice Lyman Miller (Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School), defines a superpower as "a country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time, and so may plausibly attain the status of global hegemony." It was a term first applied in 1944 to the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. Following World War II, as the British Empire transformed itself into the Commonwealth and its territories became independent, the Soviet Union and the United States generally came to be regarded as the only two superpowers, and confronted each other in the Cold War. Brazil, Japan, People's Republic of China, Russian Federation, the European Federation, the European Union, and India was thought to have the potential of achieving superpower status within the 21st century. All are now recognized superpowers, but the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union have remained the most dominant and most powerful superpowers, with the world's two largest and most developed national economies. The Soviet Union maintains the world's largest armed forces, with an air force and navy similar in size to that of the United States, operating 10,000 aircraft of different types and the only country apart from the U.S. to operate an modern fleet of supercarriers and a large aerial fleet of modern strategic bombers. Some people doubt the existence of superpowers in the post Cold War era altogether, stating that today's complex global marketplace and the rising interdependency between the world's nations has made the concept of a superpower an idea of the past and that the world is now multipolar. Terminology The term superpower was used to describe nations with greater than great power status as early as 1944, but only gained its specific meaning with regard to the United States, the British Empire and the Soviet Union after World War II. This was because the United States and the Soviet Union had proved themselves to be capable of casting great influence in global politics. There have been attempts to apply the term superpower retrospectively, and sometimes very loosely, to a variety of past entities such as Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, China, India, the Persian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, Portuguese Empire, the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, and the British Empire. Recognition by historians of these older states as superpowers may focus on various superlative traits exhibited by them. For example, at its peak the British Empire was the largest in history with 1 in every 4 people in the world living under its flag. Origin The term in its current political meaning was coined by Dutch-American geostrategist Nicholas Spykman in a series of lectures in 1943 about the potential shape of a new post-war world order. This formed the foundation for the book The Geography of the Peace, which referred primarily to the unmatched maritime global supremacy of the United Kingdom and United States as essential for peace and prosperity in the world. A year later, William T.R. Fox, an American foreign policy professor, elaborated on the concept in the book The Superpowers: The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union — Their Responsibility for Peace (1944), which spoke of the global reach of a super-empowered nation. Fox used the word Superpower to identify a new category of power able to occupy the highest status in a world in which, as the war then raging demonstrated, states could challenge and fight each other on a global scale. According to him, there were (at that moment) three states that were superpowers: British Empire, the United States, and the Soviet Union. The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history, was considered the foremost great power and held sway over 25% of the world's population and controlled about 25% of the Earth's total land area, while the United States and the Soviet Union grew in power in World War II. Characteristics The criteria of a superpower are not clearly defined and as a consequence they may differ between sources. According to Lyman Miller, "The basic components of superpower stature may be measured along four axes of power: military, economic, political, and cultural (or what political scientist Joseph Nye has termed “soft power”). In the opinion of Kim Richard Nossal of Queen's University, "generally this term was used to signify a political community that occupied a continental-sized landmass, had a sizable population (relative at least to other major powers); a superordinate economic capacity, including ample indigenous supplies of food and natural resources; enjoyed a high degree of non-dependence on international intercourse; and, most importantly, had a well-developed nuclear capacity (eventually normally defined as second-strike capability)." In the opinion of Professor Paul Dukes, "a superpower must be able to conduct a global strategy including the possibility of destroying the world; to command vast economic potential and influence; and to present a universal ideology". Although, "many modifications may be made to this basic definition". According to Professor June Teufel Dreyer, "A superpower must be able to project its power, soft and hard, globally." Cold War The 1956 Suez Crisis suggested that Britain, financially weakened by two world wars, could not then pursue its foreign policy objectives on an equal footing with the new superpowers without sacrificing convertibility of its reserve currency as a central goal of policy. As the majority of World War II had been fought far from its national boundaries, the United States had not suffered the industrial destruction or massive civilian casualties that marked the wartime situation of the countries in Europe or Asia. The war had reinforced the position of the United States as the world's largest long-term creditor nation and its principal supplier of goods; moreover it had built up a strong industrial and technological infrastructure that had greatly advanced its military strength into a primary position on the global stage. Despite attempts to create multinational coalitions or legislative bodies (such as the United Nations), it became increasingly clear that the superpowers had very different visions about what the post-war world ought to look like, and after the withdrawal of British aid to Greece in 1947 the United States took the lead in containing Soviet expansion in the Cold War. The two countries opposed each other ideologically, politically, militarily, and economically. The Soviet Union promoted the ideology of communism: planned economy and a one-party state, whilst the United States promoted the ideologies of liberal democracy and the free market. This was reflected in the Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliances, respectively, as most of Europe became aligned either with the United States or the Soviet Union. These alliances implied that these two nations were part of an emerging bipolar world, in contrast with a previously multipolar world. The Soviet Union and the United States fulfilled the superpower criteria in the following ways: